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Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

Overview

What is Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software?

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the core OS for the ASA suite. It provides firewall functionality, as well as integration with context-specific Cisco security modules. It is scaled for enterprise-level traffic and connections.

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Recent Reviews

Cisco ASA Review.

4 out of 10
August 05, 2022
Incentivized
We have used ASA to interconnect branch offices and also as a gateway. It's been a good product over the past years. Nowadays a lot of …
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CiscoASA Firepower

8 out of 10
December 09, 2021
Incentivized
Our business uses ASA'a as firewalls and for routing. We route 2 incoming connections and route them to allow our customers to come in on …
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Cisco ASA

7 out of 10
November 24, 2021
Incentivized
We use Cisco ASA as an internal firewall where we configure rules for internal communications and communications between servers also it's …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 11 features
  • VPN (48)
    9.0
    90%
  • Firewall Management Console (47)
    8.5
    85%
  • Active Directory and LDAP (47)
    8.3
    83%
  • Reporting and Logging (48)
    5.9
    59%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software?

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the core OS for the ASA suite. It provides firewall functionality, as well as integration with context-specific Cisco security modules. It is scaled for enterprise-level traffic and connections.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is Azure Firewall?

Microsoft's Azure Firewall is a managed cloud-based network security service that protects Azure Virtual Network resources.

What is Perimeter 81?

Perimeter 81 is a Zero Trust Network as a Service from the company of the same name in Tel Aviv, designed to simplify secure network, cloud and application access for the modern and distributed workforce.

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Features

Firewall

A firewall is a filter that stands between a computer or computer network and the Internet. Each firewall can be programmed to keep specific traffic in or out

8.1
Avg 8.5
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Product Details

What is Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software?

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the core operating software for Cisco’s ASA suite. It supports a variety of specialized network security and firewall options, allowing users to modularize to their business needs. It is scaled for enterprises through “clustering” ASAs, enabling 128 Gbps processing load and 50 million concurrent connections.

Cisco ASA provides a robust VPN setup process and integrates with other Cisco security offerings, including Cloud Web security and Trustsec. CWS provides cloud-based systems security across public and private clouds, and Trustsec is a software-defined segmentation product that mitigates the scope of network threats and data breaches. The platform also supports IPv4 and IPv6, enabling a smoother evolution in Internet Protocols for users.

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the core OS for the ASA suite. It provides firewall functionality, as well as integration with context-specific Cisco security modules. It is scaled for enterprise-level traffic and connections.

Reviewers rate VPN and High Availability highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(222)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(51-75 of 87)
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May 09, 2019

Cisco ASA Review

Dalibor Cvetanovic | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • We Can use multiple contexts or also known as Firewall multimode.
  • Ability to use dynamic routing protocols.
  • The complex way of connecting external connectivity.
  • Would like more SLA and event manager functionality.
  • GUI interface is lacking. The interface is java specific.
Tom Erdman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The ASA has been around forever, and has been proven to be a great firewall solution.
  • ASAs are very versatile, running everything from VPNs and ACLs to content filtering.
  • Running them in tangent with other Cisco routing solutions allows for a very diverse and secure setup.
  • There are two types of technologists: ones who speak Cisco, and ones who don't. The ASA is no different from any Cisco device, in that it comes with a learning curve.
  • These aren't consumer products, and they come with an enterprise price tag.
  • Like many vendors, Cisco uses a java based admin consoles. This is its own special form of torture.
Wouter Hindriks | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Easy to configure with a template and CLI.
  • TACACS command authorization and accounting is must have for compliance.
  • Good SNMP monitoring options.
  • Well developed and very compatible firewall OS.
  • The 'Next Generation' options feel bolted on and the performance is underwhelming.
  • Impact of enabling the Firepower Inspection is too big. Both response time and throughput suffered horribly.
January 25, 2019

Cisco ASA Rocks!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Rock solid when it comes to VPN Site-to-Site.
  • Excellent Firewall functionalities.
  • HA capabilities, it never fails.
  • It would be better if Cisco continues improving the ASDM for new administrators starting their networking career.
  • It would be great if Cisco builds a management web interface like they do for small business products.
Carlos Daniel Casañas Bertolo ஃ | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Excellent integration with several systems and equipment of other brands, as well as with the entire Cisco ecosystem.
  • Very good support and attention from the company and its associates. Constant security updates and functionalities.
  • Robust and reliable equipment, great flexibility in configurations and fully scalable in power and functionalities to the need of the company.
  • Well, the price is always an important factor with this brand, but I am witnessing that it is worth what it costs, although the ROI is generally not as good as the investors would like it to be.
  • The virtual appliance still consumes too many resources compared to similar ones and I have to assign physical network cards to get an adequate performance when implementing it.
Larry Chisholm | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Top of the line crypto, and firepower inline makes threat management easy.
  • easy to set up vpn, now including tunnel interfaces!
  • SOLID infrastructure for client to site vpn with anyconnect
  • TCO is higher than most.
  • firepower integration into the appliance is straightforward but weak. Units often times cannot process the amount of traffic thrown at them.
  • Support can be painful to work with at times. Need more english speaking staff.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
  • ASA units provide firewall capabilities that would normally be found in much more expensive equipment
  • ASA units provide POE capability for use with VOIP phones or other equipment.
  • ASA units connect outside internet to inside networks and VPN's with very little overhead and no loss of signal speed.
  • ASA units allow me to run a wireless access point in parallel so that both wired and wireless devices can share one DHCP scope which makes it easier to manage and maintain.
  • ASA units make use of ASDM but also the Cisco standard CLI which makes it easier to train engineers to manage and have ease of deployment using config templates.
  • In the ASA5506, unlike its predecessor, there are no switched Ethernet ports. Adding that feature would be helpful and save the cost of the additional switch that must be purchased.
  • The real time log viewer is not that great, it's not 100% reliable, its explanations are often a bit too technical, the filter could use some enhancement
  • The ASDM interface as a whole being java is not good. Java has become a nightmare due to poor backwards compatibility and cliff-facing certificate requirements between versions, so java versions for administrators become a nightmare to manage for what should be simple changes
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Allows remote phones to VPN and connect to the phone system
  • It’s secure and allows TLS 1.2 encryption
  • It’s more reliable to use a physical phone than soft clients e.g. Jabber
  • Since we use it for VPN phones the devices need to be configured internally before we deploy them in the field. I have to be able to update the VPN profiles remotely.
Brandon Holbrook | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Cisco ASA is very configurable.
  • Cisco ASA has a lot of features.
  • Cisco ASA is robust. Failing almost never.
  • Cisco ASA can integrate with many other Cisco security solutions.
  • There is a learning curve for Cisco ASA.
  • A lot of what can be done, initially, needs to be done at the command line interface.
  • Organizing all the firewall rules can be a little daunting with the current UI.
Jitu Mani Das | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • How we can manage: ASDM the GUI is so much easier to manage it even for a new guy also.
  • Traffic handling capacity
  • More secure and the different features it gives.
  • Support from the TAC team or from the community manages to handle issues very efficiently.
  • I would say Cisco should concentrate more how they will move way the traditional IPS to a new sand-boxing kind of environment.
Michael Timms | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Customer support is Cisco's forte, and ASA is no exception. If you have issues, they are available 24/7 to help you resolve them.
  • Longevity. I still have a 5510 running that has been running for over 3 years without a reboot with zero issues.
  • URL filtering works great.
  • Get rid of the Java based ASDM
  • The licensing could be easier.
  • Packet filtering could use some improvement.
Brian Munn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The Cisco AnyConnect VPN is used by our users and is a very easy and secure method for employees to access corporate resources.
  • The Cisco ASA 5585 can be configured in a cluster for larger throughput and high availability.
  • When purchased with FirePOWER the Cisco ASA can be configured to inspect the application layer of the packets for better threat detection.
  • The Cisco ASA can be configured via command line and with a GUI interface. The GUI interface needs work. It uses Java and depending on Java version you can have issues launching the application.
  • The Cisco ASA needs better logging for troubleshooting. When trying to narrow down an issue the logging needs more information.
  • Licensing can be difficult to understand and there are many options. Make sure you fully understand your needs before ordering.
Eric Krueger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Filtering of traffic is made easier and we are able to better control our environment.
  • VPN is secure and easy to manage through our ASAs.
  • As part of our overall security strategy, Cisco ASAs help keep our perimeter more secure through their ability to customize to our company's needs.
  • More training on customization would be great.
  • Cisco could provide better Best practice reviews of our environment once set up.
  • More reporting features for Execs would help.
Sergei Chernooki | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
  • Stateful inspection is perfectly implemented, reliable and has a very good performance.
  • NAT is feature-reach, perfectly implemented, reliable and has a very good performance.
  • VPN is feature-reach, perfectly implemented, reliable and has a very good performance (hardware limited).
  • I am not quite happy with 5500 series NGFW performance, this was fixed starting from 2100 series on.
  • HTTP inspection performance also is a bottleneck, it should not be used without clear need.
  • Licensing costs may triple the appliance price.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Consistent commands. A lot of the general commands used on other Cisco switches and routers also work here, making it easy script common tasks and changes across multiple devices without having to switch command structure.
  • Processing power. The ASA is incredibly fast and doesn't introduce much if any latency.
  • The Java based ASDM can botch commands and isn't compatible on some more locked down systems.
  • Monitoring. Really the same complaint as above, the monitoring available through the ASDM is crappy at best. A much better solution is to send the logs and mirror packets to a SEIM, but that can create issues of its own when looking for realtime analysis.
  • Compatibility across other ASA models. ASA 5520s don't play well with 5525X which don't play well with older 5510s. Each is great on it's own, but it's next to impossible to logically stack them or have them as layers of firewalls in an infrastructure.
  • Lack of cloud based management. The Cisco Meraki security devices do this well, but the ASAs are still behind in this regard.
Del Murphy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • With the Cisco ASA as a VPN endpoint, we can build a new VPN in about 2 minutes once the information exchange is completed to confirm the requirements. We have a number of Client on a number of other VPN endpoints and we can have our side built in some case days before they complete their side on a non-Cisco platform
  • I would say that the biggest problem the Cisco ASA has is for people that have never used one before. These platforms have lots of capabilities with that comes lots of configuration options. For a new person to the ASA, this can be overwhelming. But Cisco has a lot of good documentation to overcome this issue.
August 04, 2017

Cisco ASA Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Feature set, and commonality with other Cisco products.
  • Enterprise grade with plenty of options.
  • Security is second to none, and security updates are timely.
  • Bring the cost down - It is really expensive to kit out an enterprise with Cisco products. Cisco does little to reward loyal customers.
  • Make the graphical interface easier to understand. Command line is fine of expensive techs, but these days (2017) you really should be able to add a command to a firewall without needing a Cisco certification!
  • Use of terminology for NAT - Cisco has taken a different course to everyone else and confuse the marketplace by doing this.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Real-time protection against attacks from DOS applications, detection and filtering of network activity from worms and viruses, spyware, adware and malware detection.
  • The ability to use multiple contexts or also known as Firewall multimode.
  • The ability to use dynamic routing protocols.
  • GUI interface is lacking. The interface is java specific.
  • Would like more SLA and event manager functionality.
  • The complex way of connecting external connectivity.
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